Category: Space

Well, That Prevents the Space Station from Becoming an Expensive Door Stop.

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Or more accurately, it prevents it from becoming a marginally less productive doorstop from where it is now.

Michael Griffin, NASA Administrator, is now saying that he is not seeing excessive Congressional opposition to the continued purchase of Soyuz flights to support the space station.

I’m of a mixed mind. This makes it easier to shut down the Shuttle, which is easily the most self destructive program that NASA has ever embarked on, but the Space Station is a pretty useless and expensive boondoggle too.

Iran Claims Launch of Satellite Capable Launcher

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Certainly the ability to launch their own satellites is a capability that most nations desire, though I would note that a rocket that can put 100 lbs in low earth orbit could most likely put a 1000 lb warhead on a sub-orbital flight to almost anywhere on earth, based on my limited sens of orbital mechanics.

That being said, the Pentagon is saying that they doubt that the launch was successful.

The Sad, Twisted Tale NASA’s Ares rockets

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Well, it appears that, much like the shuttle, NASA’s Ares rockets are proving difficult to develop.

Originally intended to rely heavily on existing equipment, largely based on the Shuttle, nothing is going that way:

Beyond the much publicised CLV solid-rocket motor oscillation problem, other issues for Ares I include pocket buckling in its upper-stage liquid hydrogen (LH2) tank, an immature first-stage forward skirt avionics box design, protection for parachutes against the interstage’s shaped linear charge separation system and first-stage thrust vector control (TVC) changes.

I expect this to be both behind schedule and over budget, again.

Air Force Working on Dyan-Soar Successor

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The USAF is conducting drop tests of an unmanned space plane (Paid Subscription Required) as a prelude to launching a full up variant on an Atlas missile.

Aerodynamically, it’s very similar to the shuttle, in fact, they are hoping to reuse the control laws for reentry.

The issues of handling reentry and landing of an unmanned system have been solved before, albeit by the Soviets, when they did this on an unmanned test flight, actually the only flight, of their Buran shuttle.


Flight after helicopter drop.


Automated landing.


A better view of its configuration, showing its Shuttle-style double delta wings.


Concept of craft in orbit


Dyna-Soar Concept, Circa 1962

NASA to Test Vasimr On Space Station

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NASA will test the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) plasma engine on their space station

It promises something in excess of 40 times the specific impulse (fuel efficiency) of chemical rockets, and its thrust is a lot higher than alternate technologies, something on the order of about 10N (around 2 lbs) as opposed to the millinewton thrust levels of ion engines.

It should be interesting.

Previous posts here.

Falcon Launch Fails, Scotty Misses Orbit

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This makes SpaceX 0 for 3 on its Falcon-1 rockets.

This time they lost three small satellites and the ashes of 208 people, including Star Trek alum Jimmy Doohan and astronaut Gordon Cooper.

It appears to have been a problem with stage separation:

“Four methods of analysis, vehicle inertial measurement, chamber pressure, on-board video and a simple physics free body calculation, all give the same answer. [Residual thrust caused] the first stage to recontact the second stage,” says SpaceX chief executive Elon Musk.

According to SpaceX, unburned fuel in the engine’s cooling channels and manifold combined with residual oxygen to produce enough thrust to overcome the separation impulse. The solution is to increase the time between commanding main engine shutdown and stage separation.

Bummer for the families involved.

Euros Look to Man Rate ATV-ARV by 2020

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They intend to make the automated cargo vehicle a manned space capsule in the next 12 years.

The ESA is already working on the Advanced Return Vehicle (ARV), which add a 1.5 tonne return capability to the existing Automated Transfer Vehicle (ATV), and the manned vehicle would be similar to the ARV, though it would likely have a smaller propulsion section, as it would not be expected to boost the space station orbit.

Another Reason to Remember Zeppo Marx

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He founded Marman Products, an aerospace manufacturing firm, which purchased the patent for a new type of hose clamp, now called the Marman Clamp, which found its way onto all sorts high pressure hoses in aerospace, and were particularly useful for turbochargers, an area where the US excelled in WWII.

Additionally, they found their way into space applications, “When John Glenn rode into orbit aboard Friendship 7 in 1962, a six-foot-diameter Marman-type clamp released the capsule from the Atlas rocket, with explosive bolts blasting open the clamp,” and is still widely used today.

Hypersonic Developments

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First, it appears that Lockheed-Martin and Boeing will collaborate on the USAF/DARPA Blackswift technology demonstrator. (see below for notational configuration)

Blackswift

Additionally, we are increasingly seeing developments world wide in hypersonics. (Paid Subscription Required)

We have had a number of relatively successful tests in Australia and the USA, and the EU is funding Lapcat II and Atllas concepts (see below), in addition to efforts by France, Italy, the UK, and Germany.


Lapcat II

The Russians are working on plasma concepts to manage the shockwave and examining their potential as control surfaces, with, “tests on a magnetohydrodynamic (MHD) plasma generator in a simulated Mach 5.15”, being conducted, while the Japanese are looking at a combined cycle turbine with a cooled intake called the “S-Engine”


S-Engine

In terms of meaningful applications, I think that some sort of storable fuel, not the LH2 currently used for demonstrators, will have to be a part of the equation.

Explosive Bolt Pulled from Soyuz Docked to Space Station

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The Soyuz has had some issues with separation of the crew and re-entry modules, and so the has pulled the explosive bolt which is believed to have been responsible for the past two “anomalies”.

The failure of the joint to decouple smoothly led to two ballistic re-entries with much higher G-forces on re-entry and an off target landing.

Needless to say bringing an explosive device in for inspection, it has about the same boom as an M-80, is a non-trivial operation, and they have an explosion resistant container to transport it in once removed.

Still, I have to figure that the “pucker factor” is pretty high.